Olivier Lannuzel, winner of the Inalco-Vo/Vf 2025 translation prize
The prize was presented on October 5 at the festival Vo/Vf by Olivier Mannoni, literary translator and director of the ETL (École de traduction littéraire), in the presence of prize initiators Nathalie Carré and Marie Vrinat-Nikolov (Inalco).
Translator, journalist and proofreader, Olivier Lannuzel holds a DEA in translation and an MA in Balkan history from Inalco. He translates novels, short stories, theater texts and film scripts from Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian.
His work as a translator has revealed a little-known side of contemporary literature, Croatian noir fiction. Her translation of Jurica Pavičić's L'Eau rouge (Agullo, 2021), awarded the Grand Prix de littérature policière in the same year, won critical acclaim. Published in 2011, Le Livre de l'Una by Bosnian poet Faruk Šehić was also awarded the Meša Selimović Prize (2011) and the European Union Prize for Literature (2014). With its lyrical tone and subject matter, the work occupies a special place among the many literary narratives evoking the conflicts of the 1990s.
A first reading of the translations led to pre-selection of five works, which were briefly presented at the award ceremony.
- Le livre de l'Una by Faruk Sehic, translated from Bosnian by Olivier Lannuzel (Agullo)
- This rope that binds me to the earth by Lorina Bălteanu, translated from Romanian by Marily le Nir (éditions des Syrte
- A contre jour by Pirkko Saisio, translated from Finnish by Sébastien Cagnoli (Robert Laffont)
- Au soir d'Alexandrie by Alaa El Aswany, translated from Arabic by Gilles Gauthier (Actes Sud)
- Petits travaux pour un palais by László Krasznahorkai, translated from Hungarian by Joëlle Dufeuilly (Cambourakis)
summary
Le Livre de l'Una is the story of a man, a veteran of the Bosnia-Herzegovina army during the 1992-1995 war, who dives back into his history during a hypnosis session and tries to put the shattered pieces back together.
In his trance, the narrator becomes an archivist and chronicler of the past. There's the vanished country, the recent war and its horrors, the killings, the buried friends; the present and the life of a veteran, traumatized and out of step with the world and his contemporaries; haunted by an inner demon, an evil double. But there's also a declaration of love for his town, Bosanska Krupa, and its river, the Una. Her entire childhood took place there, in her grandmother's house, on the water's edge, among the children and the fish. An aquatic, dreamlike world that he evokes with great poetry. Landscapes that are not yet the field of ruins that will emerge unannounced. This is where life was, and it is through this reunion that salvation and reconstruction will undoubtedly come.
Le Livre de l'Una is a poignant, lyrical and modest novel about reclaiming life from death and destruction. (Editions Agullo)
Bosnian poet, writer and journalist, Faruk Šehić is considered by literary critics to be one of the leading figures of the "generation crushed" by the Bosnian war (1992-1995).
The Inalco Translation Prize - Vo/Vf Festival
Awarded a total of 2,500 euros, this prize is designed to highlight the quality of a translator's work, as well as the richness of literature that is sometimes still little known to the general public because it is often less widely distributed. The competition is open to prose texts (short stories or novels) published in the three years preceding the award ceremony. Works translated by Inalco members or students are not eligible.
Through this initiative, Inalco wishes to highlight its expertise in translation, as well as the recognition of the work of the translator and his or her publisher in the dialogue between the world's literatures.